Spoons, ladles, tongs, and other serving utensils used in the commercial food service are either left in the food pan or on buffet counters which in both cases increase the chances of the utensil being contaminated and thus contaminating the food.
Some in the food service industry have made attempts to elevate this problem by creating serving spoon rests, which are small bowls or trays that hold the serving utensil keeping them from being left in cooking containers, on stoves, on food servers, countertops or tables when the utensil is not being used. Such examples are patent application numbers U.S. Ser. No. 29/195,746, and U.S. Ser. No. 29/152,455.
Another product is a small pan that attaches to the side of a food server and hold the serving utensil. A third product is devices that clips on to the cooking pot enabling the serving utensil to be attached, and thus keeps it from resting in food, on stoves, tables, or countertops.
These products may work in home settings or on small buffet lines, but they are not practical to use on most commercial food serving lines such as those in schools, hospitals, cafeterias, restaurants, etc. Because of the variety of foods on a buffet line requiring separate serving utensils, there is not enough counter space to accommodate separate spoon rests for each type of food.
A short coming of the tray type spoon holder that clips on to the side of pots is impractical on most commercial buffet serving lines because many of them have steam wells with serving pans with no place to place a clip-on type spoon holder.
A short coming of some spoon holders that clip onto the pot itself is that they can only be used on chafer serving lines and will not fit on pans or trays used on most conventional serving lines with steam wells.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a holder for food serving utensils.
It is another object of the invention to keep food serving utensils from contamination from being left on countertops, tables, stoves or other surfaces.
It is another object of the invention to provide a holding place for food serving utensils when they are not being used in serving food.